Global Governance and NGO Participation

Shaping the information society in the United Nations

Charlotte Dany

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415531368
• eBook ISBN: 9781135136451
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book explores the limits of NGO influence and the conditions that constrain NGOs when they participate in international negotiations

Through an empirically rich study of the UN World Summits on the Information Society (WSIS) this book conceptualizes structural power mechanisms that shape global ICT governance and analyses the impact of NGOs on communication rights, intellectual property rights, financing, and Internet governance. The institutional framework of UN negotiations makes it easy for states to exclude NGOs from crucial meetings and to neglect their most relevant demands, in part explaining why NGOs had only limited influence on the policy outcomes of the WSIS in Geneva 2003 and Tunis 2005, although high numbers of NGOs participated. Using a critical perspective, Dany demonstrates that despite the far-reaching participation rights for civil society actors, structural power mechanisms continued to limit the influence of participating NGOs and this contradicts the widely held assumption that extensive NGO participation necessarily increases NGO influence on the policy outcomes.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, global governance, the United Nations, and global information and communication politics.

1Introduction

The Ambiguity of NGO Participation in Global Governance

In the face of cross-border policy issues and in the absence of a central authority, such as a world government, political affairs are today governed through a complex and confusing network of institutions and actors on multiple levels (locally, regionally, nationally, and globally). Global governance is a concept that has the merit of embracing this complexity, as it reflects on the absence of government at the global level. Governance means that a variety of actors seek to co-operate to maintain global order: states are less and less able to solve problems alone, so that their efforts are complemented by international organizations, economic enterprises, civil society actors or Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) (Pierre 2000: 3–4). Governance further implies a lack of hierarchy between these different actors when it comes to regulating social affairs (Finkelstein 1995: 367; Dingwerth/Pattberg 2006: 188). The prefix ‘global’ indicates that more and more problems, such as climate change or environmental pollution, evade politics between nations, as they affect all without stopping at national borders. The basic idea of global governance is thus that different kinds of actors maintain global order by collaborating on different levels with the aim of finding common solutions to emerging cross-border policy issues. Therefore, global governance is a very broad and diffuse concept, as the following well-known definition shows: ‘global governance is conceived to include systems of rule at all levels of human activity – from the family to the international organization – in which the pursuit of goals through the exercise of control has transnational repercussions’ (Rosenau 1995: 13). Similarly, global governance was more recently defined as ‘the sum of laws, norms, policies, and institutions that define, constitute, and mediate relations among citizens, society, markets, and the state in the international arena’ (Weiss/Thakur 2010: 6).

Moreover, global governance is not merely an empirical concept that describes how global order is maintained. It is also used as a normative concept that prescribes how the world should be governed (Dingwerth/Pattberg 2006: 186). While recognizing the broadness of the concept, the present study focuses on one aspect that lies at the heart of global governance: the participation of non-state actors in international institutions. The increasing presence and role of private organizations, NGOs, and corporations in regulating social affairs is one reason why global governance has become so important as an analytical concept and in political practice (Weiss/Thakur 2010: 30). Already in 1995 the Commission on Global Governance expounded in its seminal report Our Global Neighborhood: ‘At the global level, governance has been viewed primarily as intergovernmental relationships, but it must now be understood as also involving Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), citizens’ movements, multinational corporations, and the global capital market’ (Commission on Global Governance 1995). In particular, the participation of NGO actors in international negotiations, world conferences or in expert groups firmly belongs to our understanding of how global policy issues are, and should be, addressed today.

The present book analyses global governance predominantly as an empirical phenomenon. It does not aim to propose how global governance should be designed so as to yield the best results, nor how NGOs should be included in international politics so as to generate the most effective and legitimate policy outcomes. Yet, in practice, empirical and normative propositions cannot be completely separated, so that some normative implications of the findings concerning global governance will also be addressed where adequate. Empirically, this book focuses on the participation and influence of NGOs at the United Nations (UN) World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). The United Nations is one of the prime arenas where global governance takes place; it serves ‘as the principal mechanism through which governments collaboratively engage each other and other sectors of society in the multilateral management of global affairs’ (Commission on Global Governance 1995). This study of NGO participation in the WSIS ties in with more critical accounts of global governance and contributes to a growing academic interest in power and global governance (e.g., Barnett/Duvall 2005a; Hurrell 2007). It extends and specifies the power concept for empirical research on the conditions of NGO influence. Instead of focusing on the power of NGOs or states alone, the notion of structural power allows for a better assessment of the limits of NGO influence. By explaining why some NGO actors fail to influence policy outcomes, this study further helps to identify power within transnational civil society and mechanisms of power within international negotiations. A description of the historic and current roles of NGOs in global governance, as well as the hopes and expectations related to their increased presence in international negotiations, will serve as a starting point for this endeavour. As will become clear, the expectations are so high that they need to be disappointed, especially as more and more downsides of NGO participation become visible.

NGOs as Bearers of Hope in Global Governance

Political Trend Towards NGO Participation

Non-Governmental Organizations have been operating across borders for a long time and with varying effects. The first transnational NGO that played an important role in world politics was the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. It was founded in 1839 and contributed to the abolition of slavery through political campaigning and boycotts (Nadelmann 1990: 495). From early on, NGOs also sought to influence international politics by getting involved in international conferences. Members of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society travelled to Brussels to lobby state delegates at international conferences against the slave trade in 1889–90 (Charnowitz 1997: 196). Transnational networks of activists thus had already achieved path-breaking societal changes in colonial times, i.e. in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century: they contributed not only to the abolition of slavery in the United States, but also eradicated the painful custom of binding the feet of Chinese girls, and achieved women’s suffrage in many parts of the world (Keck/Sikkink 1998: 39–78). The international activities of non-state actors were also wide-ranging in the interwar period. An example of this was the global campaign for disarmament, which, however, remained unsuccessful (Davies 2007).

After the second world war, a profound change in the relationship between states and NGOs emerged through the founding of the United Nations. The United Nations allowed NGOs to be included on a regular basis in international negotiations. In fact, the term ‘Non-Governmental Organization’ was coined in the UN’s founding charter. The UN Charter allowed the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to ‘make suitable arrangements for consultation with nongovernmental organizations which are concerned with matters within its competence’ (UN 24 October 1945: ch. 10, art. 71). Over the decades, ever more NGOs were awarded consultative status with the ECOSOC, which is the best entrance card to participation at world conferences. But it was the major UN world conferences of the 1990s that became the symbol for excessive NGO participation and global governance, even though they had been criticized from the beginning for the crass disparity between the resources needed and the expected achievements, as well as for the tediousness of their discussions and the poor implementation of their results (Wesel 2004: 197). A watershed moment occurred at the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, which attracted some 2,400 NGO representatives. Another 17,000 took part in the parallel NGO Forum. By comparison, there were only 172 government representatives present at the conference (UN Conference on Environment and Development 1992). Moreover, in the last 10 years alone, the number of NGOs with consultative status at the ECOSOC has doubled; 3,536 NGOs were awarded consultative status at ECOSOC in 2011.¹ All NGOs with consultative status are eligible for participation in UN conferences. Additionally, a large number of NGOs without consultative status can apply for accreditation for each summit. The Union of International Associations (UIA) lists about 26,200 active international NGOs in 2007/2008.² However, these numbers are not sufficient to represent the changing status of NGOs in world politics.

What is even more important, the political status of NGOs has been enhanced considerably through their participation in the world conferences (Willetts 2000: 193). The Earth summit’s key document, Agenda 21, explicitly refers to the need for the ‘fullest possible communication and cooperation between international organizations, national and local governments and Non-Governmental Organizations’ (UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs 1992). NGOs brought new issues to the agendas of these conferences, convinced state actors to make certain policy choices, and even helped draft the policy documents. Afterwards, they observed and reported on whether nation states had complied with the policies they had adopted (monitoring). In the following decade, the differences between NGO representatives and official diplomats – state delegates – were greatly reduced to the degree that some scholars now talk of ‘NGO diplomats’ (Betsill/Corell 2008: 2). This development could also be described as an institutionalization of NGO participation. In the governance arenas of the United Nations world conferences, NGOs are most integrated and institutionalized. This means that there is an increasing continuity in consultation and cooperation between state and non-state actors that amounts to transnational, rather than international, governance (Finke 2005: 78). Parallel to this trend towards integration and institutionalization in the United Nations, NGOs are also increasingly active outside of, and even against, international organizations. As Transnational Social Movement Organizations (TSMOs) they fight, for example, in the social movement for global justice for an alternative globalization ‘from below’. The watershed moment in that respect was the ‘Battle of Seattle’ in 1999 alongside the meeting to launch the Millennium Round of the World Trade Organization (WTO) (della Porta et al. 2006: 1). NGO participation in social movements and in international organizations can be distinguished in particular by their locus of activity and their strategies. Social movements are mainly active outside of institutional and organizational channels (Snow et al. 2004: 11) and they use protest to pressure institutions (della Porta et al. 2006: 19).

Striving to become an ‘NGO diplomat’ within an international organization to help draft policies, or vehemently protesting against the policies of an international organization on the streets are thus two opposed tactics. In this book, I am interested in the former. I seek to find out whether the institutionalization of NGO participation in international organizations actually enhances NGOs’ influence. However, in this endeavour, the literature on social movements can help to focus the analytic lens. It urges one to consider internal structures and dynamics of the NGO networks as well as the political opportunities and constraints that make up for the movements’ success. Furthermore, although following opposed tactics in different places, NGO diplomats in international negotiations and social movements face similar challenges. These challenges are better described for social movements: they must ensure that the internal decision-making process is democratic and practical (della Porta et al. 2006: 49) and they are confronted with problems arising from institutionalization processes, such as professionalization and co-optation (ibid.: 22). In this book, I show how these problems arise for those NGOs that become deeply involved in international negotiations of the United Nations and how they affect their ability to influence policy outcomes. Some of the questions that will be addressed in this book are as follows: Are NGOs indeed better able to influence policy outcomes through institutionalized participation? How does institutionalized participation inhibit the NGOs’ potential to influence policy outcomes? What limits of influence does it create? How does it change the NGOs themselves as actors; what adaptation processes and conflicts arise? These questions are not sufficiently addressed in existing studies on NGOs in global governance, as research has mostly stressed hopes related to NGO participation.

Promises of NGO Participation in Global Governance

Without a doubt, NGOs and other civil society actors have great potential in world politics. They have, for example, the potential to increase the inclusiveness of decision-making, to set new issues on the international agenda and to frame these issues in a specific way. That non-state actors from different countries become integral parts of decision-making on global policy issues thus promises to make international politics more effective and legitimate. Or so the official story goes on NGO participation in global governance.

First of all, political scientists and politicians realized that increased NGO participation could be the solution for international policy-making, which has been constricted by globalization processes (Commission on Global Governance 1995). When many people in different countries are affected and neither the origins of, nor the solution to, the problem accrue from a single state, states need to cooperate with one another. And they best cooperate through global governance. In drawing on NGOs’ resources – primarily on their knowledge and legitimacy – states are, from this perspective, better able to increase their awareness of the pressing policy issues and to formulate more adequate and enforceable policies. NGOs provide the necessary information and facilitate ratification and implementation processes (Raustiala 1997b). According to this view, NGO participation effectively strengthens the power of the state (Raustiala 1997a: 593). The second hope relating to NGOs concerns their potential to make global governance more legitimate. NGO participation increases the legitimacy of procedures, because it contributes to more transparency and inclusiveness. Furthermore, NGOs force states to justify their decisions and to argue rather than bargain. This ‘emphasis on arguing, learning, and persuasion holds quite some promise in improving the quality of international negotiations’ (Risse 2004: 304). NGOs may also contribute to a global public sphere and thus help to reduce the democratic deficit that international organizations suffer from, acting as a transmission-belt between the wider public and international institutions (Nanz/Steffek 2004; Steffek/Nanz 2008: 8). This is particularly the case at UN conferences, which are described as environments in which a global civil society can emerge. NGO participation at world summits therefore promises a further democratization of global governance (Friedman et al. 2005). Besides legitimizing procedures, NGOs might also increase the legitimacy of the policy outcomes. Policy outcomes are more legitimate when they improve the living conditions of the underprivileged who are inadequately represented by their governments, such as the victims of landmines, or indigenous peoples in the rain forest in the Amazon region. For that purpose, NGOs take on the role of advocates to persuade states to agree on inter national declarations (Keck/Sikkink 1998: 25). NGOs call attention to a problematic situation, explain and politicize the situation, and provide state actors with information on how to counter these problems. Although it is also common to invite affected people to testify, their interests are often voiced by NGOs. The influence of advocacy NGOs may enhance the common welfare by creating and disseminating norms which can guide the behaviour of states.

Hopes and expectations related to enhancing effectiveness and legitimacy underline the NGOs’ potential to strengthen states, and support them in tackling global policy issues. By contrast, a third hope relates to the potential of NGOs to act as a counter-hegemonic force against states. From this perspective it is argued that NGOs have the potential to undermine state power, because they fulfil many functions that used to be exclusively the domains of states. Some even hope for the NGOs to act as a counter-hegemonic force against dominant states and business organizations in international politics (Falk 1999; Cox/Schechter 2002). Fuelled by enthusiasm about the ‘information revolution’, the end of the Cold War, and the NGOs’ crucial role in transforming the former Soviet countries in Eastern Europe into democracies, researchers even spoke about a power-shift from state actors to NGOs (Mathews 1997). One might think that NGOs would fulfil their counter-hegemonic role better outside of international policy-making arenas, such as through being part of a worldwide social movement that organizes public protests on the streets, naming, shaming, and blaming governments. But ‘NGOs are also able to push around even the largest governments’ within international negotiations (ibid.: 53). This proves that NGOs are also said to play out their oppositional power even as participants in international negotiations.

This overview of the diverse hopes related to global governance shows the great potential that is ascribed to NGOs. And indeed, NGOs have achieved a great deal in the past, even against the will of the most powerful states: most would agree that next to the Ottawa Treaty, better known as the treaty that banned anti-personnel landmines,³ and the International Criminal Court (ICC), no Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) would exist without the initiatives of NGOs and their involvement in the respective international negotiation processes. The CBD was signed in 1992 at the Rio Earth summit. The ban of landmines became possible because NGOs initiated a successful campaign at the Review Conference of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, which was then conveyed into the Ottawa Process. The treaty to ban landmines was opened to signature in 1997, and many countries followed this call (except for, crucially, the United States). Although landmines were considered conventional weapons for a long time, NGOs, together with certain middle powers such as Canada, managed to generate a norm that linked the use of landmines to the use of nuclear weapons. As a consequence, states that still used landmines were pressured to agree to stop using them for fear of losing international prestige (Price 1998). NGOs also initiated the establishment of the ICC against the will of the United States (Glasius 2002; Deitelhoff 2006: 27). The Rome Statute of the ICC was adopted in 1998 and put into force in 2002. These hopes and successes related to NGOs led to an increased presence and prominence of NGOs in world politics. And, as usual, the NGOs’ increased presence stimulated a backlash against civil society among policy-makers and triggered a debate about the aggressive tactics of civil society actors. States raised concerns about NGO accountability, representativity, and legitimacy (Clark 2003: 171–2). The rising importance of NGOs seems to have elevated the concerns of some states that have historically had reservations about NGO participation (Florini 2000: 215–16). This was accompanied by a similar backlash among political scientists.

Downsides of Participation

Political scientists increasingly recognize that participation comes at a certain cost. Most often, problems of NGO participation in international negotiations are related to the NGOs’ lack of legitimacy, as Brühl explains (2006: 172). Moreover, some of the studies suggest that the participation of NGOs in global governance, particularly within the United Nations, does not really enhance their influence. Even though the downsides of NGO participation in international negotiations, especially those taking place in the United Nations, are rarely discussed, empirical research occasionally hints that the United Nations might not be such a good opportunity structure for NGO influence as is usually postulated. For example, one of the biggest successes for NGOs, the ban of anti-personnel landmines, only became possible when a political process parallel to the UN conferences was established. Not until Canada provided an alternative space for negotiation in the Ottawa Process, which was uncoupled from the UN Conference of Disarmament, were the NGOs able to succeed in their efforts for a fast and complete ban of anti-personnel landmines (Price 1998: 634; Hampson/Reid 2003: 16). However, in these articles the authors do not discuss what follows from this observation for reconsidering participation in UN conferences as a condition for NGO influence.

Problems of Representation and Advocacy

Most scholars perceive as a legitimacy problem the fact that NGOs who are active in international negotiations are not able to represent the manifold issues of the ‘global civil society’ in a balanced fashion. This unsatisfying situation challenges the legitimacy of NGOs but also their influence, because NGOs are expected to give underprivileged and underrepresented people a voice. Problems of representation arise, for example, from the disproportionate number of large European and North American NGOs that are active in international politics. This illustrates a reality that is juxtaposed with the NGOs...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Tables
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction: the ambiguity of NGO participation in global governance
• 2. Power and influence in global governance
• 3. A structurationist framework of analysis
• 4. The information society: issues and practices
• 5. Global ICT governance at the WSIS: NGO influence
• 6. Structural power mechanisms at the WSIS
• Conclusions
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index